To the long-timers in his life, Jesse Lumsden, sounds like, well, Jesse Lumsden.

To the more recent additions like Canadian bobsled teammate Justin Kripps, the voice on the other end of the line seemingly belongs to a stranger.

“Justin thought he had the wrong number the one time he called me,” Lumsden says. “I guess he had never heard my actual voice before — he had just heard this raspy, hoarse, strange voice.”

The raspy, hoarse voice is a thing of the past for Canada’s most famous football-player-turned-bobsledder. From the top of the podium, from bottom the track, the former Calgary Stampeder can yell and holler with the best of them.

But in rare quiet moments on the World Cup bobsled circuit, the 30-year-old reflects on the frog in his throat that marked nine of the most stressful months of his life.

First he blew out his knee in his first game as an Edmonton Eskimo, an injury that foreshadowed the end of his promising CFL career the following year Calgary. Then he made Canada’s Olympic bobsled team.

On the urging of a friend’s mom, Lumsden went to the doctor due the weakness of his voice. Tests showed a collection of small nodes — or bumps — on his vocal cords.

Unable to schedule surgery before the Olympics, Lumsden suited up for his country in Whistler with the nagging fear that a cancer battle lurked around the next corner.

Looking back, Lumsden understands fully why he wept at the finish line of the most important race of his life.

“I tried not to think about it as much as I could, but there was always this dark looming idea that this could be very, very, serious, and that it could affect and change my life in a very serious way,” said Lumsden, who finished fifth with Pierre Lueders in both the two-man and four-man. “It was the positioning and how far back these nodes were that concerned the doctors. The farther back they are, the more chance there is of them becoming malignant, I guess.”

Competing at the Olympics, especially on home soil, ranks as one of the more stressful life experiences for any athlete.

Combine that with a health scare an all bets are off.

“I tried to stay in the now as best as I could and focus on what I was trying to achieve and the goal I was trying to achieve,” he said. “It’s not an easy thing to do, but being at the Olympics is enough of a distraction, so you didn’t think about it too much.

“But when you’re by yourself and you’re alone and wondering — that’s when it was hardest.”

After the Games, Lumsden underwent surgery to remove the nodes. Thankfully, the test results came back benign. Slowly, very slowly his voice returned to normal.

His outlook on life, however, forever changed.

“I couldn’t talk at all for 10 days after the surgery, and I only slipped up once,” he said. “I realized the people who talk the most say the absolute least. You can learn so much by not saying anything in a conversation — by just observing and listening and taking it all in.

“I never want to be one of those people who is talking, talking all the time but saying very little.”

In his life as a football player, Lumsden’s job required him to talk virtually every day to reporters (usually providing updates on his latest injury.)

These days, Lumsden toils in relative anonymity as a brakeman for Lyndon Rush in the push to qualify for the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

The original game plan called for Lumsden to move up to the driver’s seat in hopes of filling the vacancy created by the retirement of the venerable Pierre Lueders. He stepped back from that goal last season in hopes of giving Canada its best chance at winning gold in Sochi, with Rush as the pilot.

In football terms, Lumsden switched over to life in the trenches as an offensive lineman from the more glamorous world of the featured tailback in open field.

“I don’t look at it as a demotion or anything like that,” he said. “It’s just as valuable, because without the brakeman, the pilot can’t do his job. It’s just like in football. The running back can’t do his job without the o-lineman and everybody else.”

As it stands, the competition in Canada’s top two-man sled has never been stiffer with Lumsden pitted against Lascelles Brown in the fight to shove Rush down the track in Sochi.

Brown won silver in the two-man with Lueders at the 2006 Turin Olympics and bronze in the four-man with Rush at the 2010.

Fresh off a stint of competing on behalf of Monaco, Brown is back and ready to fight for the top job.

“That’s given me more motivation to get better and be the best that I can be so I can perform at the highest level,” Lumsden said. “The competition is something I’m used to from football. It’s not like it’s something I can’t handle or anything like that.”

Lumsden and Rush won Canada’s first two-man gold of the season on Dec. 15. In the New Year, Lumsden and Brown will rotate with the coaches ultimately deciding which man will push the two-man sled at the world championships in St. Moritz, Switzerland.

Through it all, Lumsden promises to not lose sight of the ultimate goal of gold in Sochi.

“Physically, I’m getting better every time I get to push and race,” he said. “That’s really important for me, always trying to improve and get better.

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